Palola Lumpur
i'm quite fond of Dumps' designation for Kuala Lumpur. Despite being told the correct pronunciation, he politely replied that he would rather say it his way. Which is another way of saying that we made it here safely, with only the usual hurdles of car sickness, wrestling matches, switched currencies, luggage limits, queues for queues and tipping protocols to overcome. Even more encouraging, it looks as though the Indonesian government may see fit to issue a visa to our little band of cage fighters, processing the social visa required for more than a 30 day stay despite what looked like some potentially daunting circumstances (tickets to Bali already booked for Friday, Indonesian embassy closed tomorrow, being sent round the houses at the Embassy to a lot of shaking heads, being told by one person that we all needed to apply in person - did they know what they were letting themselves in for?). Finally, a kindly lady took pity on me, and we went through the labyrinth of forms together, asking some very unrelated questions in the process. With a bit of luck, our passports will be up in a few hours, and sighs of relief can become official. KL itself reminds me of a sort of Tropical Toronto: large boulevards, laid out fairly griddish, and jammed with cars, a skyline featuring some monstrous skyscrapers (both the Petronas and KL tower are visible from half an hour away), a forest of condominium buildings, many under construction, and a general open friendliness on the part of the locals (gleaned, albeit hastily, from experiences with taxi, hotel, and street vendors). And (good lord) there is air conditioning everywhere. My feet nearly left the ground for sheer optimism on the way back from the embassy. Then i saw something very worrying: Deep Purple concert posters. Massive ones. Everywhere. the long-suffering Bacon rinses off another coat of sick Egg tries to improvise a bed…